


Aftermath

by FluffySherlollyFan119



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, ILYAnniversary2018, TFP Fallout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 15:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13390860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffySherlollyFan119/pseuds/FluffySherlollyFan119
Summary: Sherlock goes to Molly's after that night in TFP





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> As usual thanks to metricjenn for her beta skills and callie-ariane for her transcripts. 
> 
> I have a multitude of opinions about how this could have gone but this particular version is inspired by Louise Brealey's tweet where she mentioned they should have shown Molly roundly kick Sherlock's ass.

Sherlock and John stood next to each other watching as the police secured the reinforced cell to the helicopter and it was prepared for take off. 

 

“You okay?” John said quietly to Sherlock. 

 

Sherlock thought for a second. “I said I’d bring her home. I can’t, can I?” 

 

John sighed “Well you gave her what she was looking for; context.” he reasoned 

 

“Is that good?” Sherlock wondered looking round at John. 

 

“It’s not good, it’s not bad, It’s…” He screwed up his face, searching for the right words. “It is what it is.” 

 

“I, uh… I called Molly. She seemed a little upset but none the worse for wear other than that.” John explained after a while of silence. 

 

“What did you tell her?” Sherlock asked, avoiding his friend’s gaze. 

 

“Just to give you time to explain and hear you out. I didn’t think it was my place to tell her about your sister. You’ll need to talk to her at some point” John sighed, rubbing his forehead in thought. 

 

“No, I should tell her.” Sherlock said quietly. “Come, the car’s waiting.” he strode forward towards the lights flashing from the police cars in the distance. John noticed how his feet landed heavily on the ground with each step, as if he was carrying a great weight. John followed and got into the car silently. 

 

They didn’t say anything to each other for a while, as the car drove them back into the city. They were only five minutes away from John’s when he remembered that Sherlock wouldn’t have anywhere to stay for the time being since his sister had blown up his apartment. “I’ll make up the guest bedroom for you when we get there. You can stay as long as you need to.” John muttered, more to himself than to his friend as he snuggled into the blanket and leaned his head onto the back of the seat. 

 

“You can do it tomorrow. I’m going to Molly’s tonight.” Sherlock responded quietly, not looking away from the window as he addressed his friend. 

 

John stopped, lifting his head from where he’d rested it to look at his friend, his question unspoken. 

 

“You said yourself, I’ll need to talk to her at some point.” Sherlock shrugged, still not looking at John. His voice sounded dull. Not the usual emotionless fury of his deductions but numb, almost empty. 

 

“You don’t need to do it tonight, you’re tired.” John said leaning back again. That’s an understatement, he thought. 

 

“If I don’t do it tonight I probably never will.” Sherlock said finally as the car pulled up in front of John’s residence. Sherlock finally turned to look at his friend and his eyes told John not to argue. “Have a good night, John. Hug Rosie close, give her a kiss from her Uncle Sherlock.” he managed a weak smile as John stepped out of the car. 

 

The corner of John’s mouth twitched up in response. “Will do. Let me know if you wanna drop by later.”

 

“I’ll come tomorrow, I’ll sleep at Molly’s. She always lets me stay if I ask.” Sherlock smiled to himself, looking away a little sheepishly from John. 

 

“Not if she kicks you out after tonight.” John joked. Then thought better of it when he saw Sherlock’s face drop. “I’m sure she won’t, I’ll see you tomorrow.” When Sherlock didn’t answer, John decided to let him be. They all needed some time to themselves after the past 24 hours. “Good night.” He said, closing the car door and walking up to his house. 

 

John watched until the driver pulled away, driving towards the second address Sherlock had supplied him with earlier. 

 

When he finally arrived, the windows were dark. Molly was usually in on Sunday evenings, either watching TV or reading a book. She rarely worked as she preferred to have the quiet day to herself. With a sigh Sherlock heaved himself out of the car and towards the front door. He easily found the loose brick in the wall which she kept a pair of spare keys behind. She’d told him about it when he’d hidden out at her place after Reichenbach. Oh how different things had been back then.  

 

He unlocked the door quietly. As much as he wanted to talk to her tonight he didn’t want to wake her if she was already asleep. For a moment he thought she might have been but then he saw the flickering light of the television from the living room and the bundle on the sofa in the dark. 

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” She asked sitting up, the blankets falling off her shoulder and pooling in her lap. She looked cross. He could tell she had been crying. Her red-rimmed eyes and tear stained cheeks glowing in the bluish light from the TV set. But she was also angry. Her eyebrows knitted together and her lips shifted between frowning and scowling. 

 

“I wanted to talk Molly.” He took a step towards her, relieved to see her safe. Greg and John had both spoken with her and made sure she was safe and they had told him she was. But it was a different thing entirely, seeing her here in her home and safe among her blankets. 

 

“Haven’t you said enough.” She growled. “I don’t want to talk, go away.” She sniffed, wiping her cheeks and nose on her sleeve. 

 

“No, Molly.” He said, walking towards her again. He was taking it slowly, as if approaching a scared animal that could bolt any second. “I want to explain what happened tonight. What really happened. All of it and not just what John and Greg might have told you.” 

 

At the last of his words Molly jumped up from the sofa and lunged towards him, the blankets thrown into a corner of the room. Her fists connected with his chest and shoulders. 

 

“HOW DARE YOU!” She yelled. “HOW DARE YOU HUMILIATE ME LIKE THAT!” 

 

“What? What do you mean, Molly?” Sherlock was confused. Molly was not only angry with him but she was hitting him. And not jokingly either she was putting as much force as she could behind her punches. She caught him in the ribs with one and he fell back. She stopped then, her usual caring nature telling her to go to him to see if he was okay but she stood her ground, looking down as he remained sitting on the floor, catching his breath. 

 

“It wasn’t enough for you to hurt me like that, you told John about it? Didn’t you think that’s he’s not just your friend but mine too. How am I supposed to face him  _ every single day _ when you humiliated me in front of him?” She spat, clenching her teeth and biting back her tears. She was dangerously close to crying again. She didn’t want to cry anymore. She had been curled up on the couch since he had hung up without even so much as a ‘bye’ 

 

“It wasn’t something I could help. Mycroft and John were there when I had to call you. There wasn’t anywhere for them to go.” He said when he’s gotten his breath back. He didn’t dare stand back up yet for fear she would start punching him again. 

 

“Mycroft?! Your brother was there too? I knew you were an unfeeling bastard but I  _ never _ believed you could ever be cruel to anyone. Not truly.” She shook her head at him, sitting back down because she was starting to feel dizzy with anger. 

 

“Molly please, listen to me. Please. You promised John you would let me explain. Please will you let me tell you the whole story?” He crawled over in front of her, begging her to let him explain. She wouldn’t even look at him. When she didn’t speak he decided the shortest, least complicated version would have to do. 

 

“I have a younger sister. Her name’s Eurus and she was taken away to an institution when she was about six after setting our house on fire.” He started. Molly turned to look at him, biting her lower lip, allowing him to speak because, yes she had promised John, albeit half-heartedly, that she would let Sherlock explain. “She - uh- she killed my best friend, Victor before that. We used to play pirates together and he had red hair so he was red beard and I was blackbeard because of my hair.” He started going off on a bit of a tangent before he remembered that she was really pissed at him and a walk down memory lane was probably better left till another time. 

 

“Anyway, she killed him by drowning him in our well and then she set the house on fire and my Uncle Rudy convinced Mummy and Dad to send her away. Mycroft conditioned my memories so that I would remember as little as possible of her - his twisted way of protecting me. And then Mycroft perpetuated this lie that she had died in another fire in her institution. Of course she didn’t. He sent her to Sherrinford. Think Alcatraz but more advanced, so to speak. He kept her locked up in there for most of her life, until she escaped a few months ago. She pretended to be John’s therapist. We went over there to… I’m not entirely sure why we went over there. She nearly blew us all up - Baker Street is completely gone. She made John shoot the Governor of the jail to save the wife. But he didn’t and the governor shot himself and Eurus killed the wife anyway.” 

 

“Oh.” She managed to say, still looking at Sherlock. 

 

“Yes, if you thought I was an unfeeling bastard you clearly haven’t met her. There was another  _ game _ she made us play but there’s plenty of time to tell you about that. The third room we went into, there was this coffin. Small and practical, she made me deduce who it was, I was working on it and then Mycroft saw the plaque on the lid. It said ‘I Love You’. No name just that and I knew then and there it was meant to be your coffin.” Sherlock stopped to take a breath to steady himself but instead it came out shaky and he fell back, no longer kneeling in front of Molly but sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up. 

 

“She had cameras. I could see you. In the kitchen, making tea with orange. Wearing that horrid striped jumper you love so much.” He said, looking up at her. 

 

“That’s not true, you probably just deduced all that. Saw the orange peel in my bin bag, my mug on the table. The jumper’s probably a guess.” 

 

“No Molly. Think. I haven’t been in any other room today but this one. She had cameras on you. You were over by the sink when she called you.  _ She  _ called you on my phone, not me. Why were you crying?” He wondered momentarily. 

 

“No reason. Bad day. Go on.” She said, wanting to hear the next bit of the story, why it had been so important for her to say those words. 

 

Sherlock made a mental note to ask her again later but continued. “She said she had this place rigged with bombs. That if I didn’t get you to say those words, she would blow you up. But I couldn’t let you know that something was wrong or she would ‘terminate the session and your life’. John and Mycroft were there with me I couldn’t do anything other than make you say the words.” Molly looked down, not sure she wanted to believe him anymore. Then she noticed his hands, scarred and bloodied. She reached down and cupped them gently in her hands, lifting them closer to her to take a good look. 

 

“What did you do to yourself?” She asked calmly as she turned on the lamp next to the sofa. No hint of a surprise in her tone. Sherlock always managed to turn up on her doorstep when he needed bandaging up. 

 

“Nothing.” Sherlock pulled his hands back. Something rough scratched against Molly’s palm. 

 

“Sherlock! What is that? Do you have something in that wound?” She asked pulling his hands in hers again. She examined a particularly nasty scratch down the side of his hand and palm, noticing the splinters poking out. She sighed. “What did you do to yourself?” She asked sounding like a mum whose son had just scratched his knees. She dropped his hand in her lap. “Stay here I’ll go get my kit and we’ll take care of it.” 

 

“No.” Sherlock said, grabbing at her knee. She stopped and turned back to him. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Molly.” He whispered. There were tears in his eyes as he looked at her now. 

 

“Th-that’s okay, Sherlock.” She said slowly, take aback by his emotions. “Y-you didn’t. You didn’t hurt me. See?” She lent back a little and opened her arms, letting him see she was all right. “In fact, if what you say is true, I reckon you saved my life.” She put on her best smile, even though she didn’t exactly feel like it in the moment. 

 

“I didn’t.” Sherlock said, keeping her in place as she tried to get up again. “There were never any bombs. She lied so you were never in trouble. I could have just refused to let her trick me and you would have been okay. I could have not hurt you.” 

 

She shook her head. “You couldn’t have known. And you weren’t going to take that chance were you? Not you, not Sherlock Holmes, the man who pretended to die to save the lives of his friends. Not the man who would have died if there hadn’t been any other way.” she said, remembering the events vividly. 

 

“No.” He shook his head, convinced in the moment. “I would have done the same for you.” He said, reassuring her that she wasn’t different than any of their other friends. 

 

“I know.” She whispered. She leant forward and kissed him on his forehead. She didn’t know what power or spirit possessed her to do it. But she took advantage of his momentary confusion to go fetch her first aid kit from the kitchen. He didn’t say a word while she patiently examined his hands and pulled out every splinter she found with the tweezers. “Jesus Sherlock did you try to cut down a tree with your bare hands or something?” her light-hearted attempt at a joke made the corners of his mouth twitch a little but it didn’t have a hope of reaching his eyes.

 

“I broke the coffin.” He said quietly. 

 

She started to laugh and then realised he was being serious. “What? Why?” 

 

“Because I couldn’t bare to think of you in there. Dead. Especially not because of something I had done.” He said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

 

“But… you didn’t do anything. I mean, you didn’t do anything to make me dead.” She tried to soothe him as best she could. 

 

“Moriarty. Eurus. They went after you because they knew I cared for you. Look at what happened to Mary because she was my friend and I couldn’t shut up for five minutes. Can you imagine what they would do to you if anyone ever knew.” 

 

“Knew what?” She whispered, tears forming at the mention of her friend’s name. 

 

Sherlock stopped, looking back at her, wondering if she was playing a joke on him or if she truly didn’t understand. “That I love you, Molly.” He whispered back, looking her in the eyes. 

 

She looked back down to his hands and continued working on them. “Yeah all right, Sherlock.” She said, no hint of a smile in her voice. 

 

“It’s true, Molly. I’ve… always known that I felt  _ something  _ for you. But I never really knew what it was. I don’t believe in this sort of thing and that’s made it harder for me to realise what I was feeling. I could very well be wrong but…” He stopped, trying to think of what he could say that would the jumbled mess in his head make sense to them both. 

 

“How long?” She asked. 

 

“The very first time I realised what I was feeling, still not too sure it’s love, but the first time was when I came back. Actually, no, when I was away. I would think about you every night. Even when I was running for my life or being beaten to a pulp, somehow you were always there in my mind.” 

 

“Along with John and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson I would assume.” She prompted. 

 

He shook his head. “No Molly, I thought about them every now and again but you were the one thing that kept me going. And even after that. I - sometimes I would hear a song. A mundane melody on Mrs Hudson’s radio or somewhere and the words would just remind me of you. I don’t know if that’s what you would call love but it sounds like what everyone says it is.” With each word that he said, the smile on Molly’s face grew. 

 

“You’re babbling.” she muttered when he paused. 

 

“Sorry.” He said shyly. 

 

“Sherlock Holmes, nervous babbler.” She giggled. “Who’d’ve thought it.”

 

He smiled back at her softly. His eyes dropped down to where they were still holding hands and remembered something Mary had once told him. 

 

_ Love is holding their hand and feeling everything in the world fall into place, no matter how bad it is.  _

 

“Mary knew.” He whispered.

 

“What?” she said, not hearing him the first time. 

 

“Mary knew. She knew I loved you.” He told her, looking back up at her. 

 

“Mary always knew everything. Nothing got past her.”  Molly smiled, remembering how her friend used to tease her everytime Sherlock turned around. 

 

“She probably bet on us getting together before the end of the year.” Sherlock laughed again. 

 

Molly didn’t know what else to say so instead she laughed with him and stood up. “How about I go make us some tea and then you can tell me the whole story, in detail, all of the deductions and everything. I know how you like that.” 

 

His smile slipped and he looked away. He wasn’t feeling as good as he always did after solving a mystery. “I’d rather not.” 

 

“Okay, well then I’ll make us tea and you can talk about whatever you want. We can even just sit and watch TV if that's what you’d like.”

 

“Do you mind if I pop in the shower. I still smell like fish.” He sniffed at his coat.

 

“Fish?” She raised her eyebrows. 

 

“How else do you get onto an secluded island security facility in the middle of the sea off the coast of Wales? We hijacked a fishing trawler. You should have heard Mycroft's complaining. Of course that all stopped when we told him he could pretend to be a fisherman.” 

 

“Does Mycroft harbour dreams of being a simple fisherman then?” 

 

“No he just likes dressing up. John had to talk him out of doing his Lady Bracknell.” Sherlock explained, heaving himself up to stand in front of her. 

 

“Hop in. I’ll make you something to eat too.” 

 

“Hot chocolate, please.” Sherlock said. 

 

“Will do.” Molly said. 

 

  
  
  
  



End file.
